I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy's massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It's been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let's say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they're what's colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn't be much of an issue if they didn't regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, ...

As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.

I posted a comment in this thread linking to "https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs" (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren't widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the "Be nice and civil" rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn't you say?

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

Proof:

So many of you will now probably think something like: "So what, it's the fediverse, you can use another instance."

The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they're not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it's rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there's nobody to discuss anything with.

I'm not sure if there's a solution here, but I'd like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (46 children)

All instances, except for the lightly moderated ones, have censorship issues from time to time. You can say one thing on one thread, and that same thing can get you banned in another thread on the same instance. This is an issue with the great degree of political polarization on Lemmy.

My point is that Lemmy is multipolar. It’s divided between the right-leaning instances like Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, the left-leaning instances like Lemmy.ml, slrpnk.net, blahaj.zone, and dbzer0, and the leftist instances like Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Mods and admins on each instance are guilty of maintaining the “instance line.”

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

While I won't repeat what got me banned, this is what got me banned from Political Memes on Lemmy.world, this isn't just a Lemmy.ml thing. This is also when one of the moderators claimed they weren't censoring anyone and were incredibly fair on a comment chain calling out their censorship, and refused to elaborate. They would not even tell me how I could edit my comments to comply with their rules.

What does this all mean?

Honestly, I think close to everyone knows that Marxists dominate Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, etc. I think close to everyone knows Liberals dominate Lemmy.world. I think everyone knows that anarchists dominate dbzer0, slrpnk.net, Hexbear.net, etc.

If your call to action is to defederate Lemmy.ml, then that's just contributing to this polarization effect, as people would jump ship from .world and .ml to the other if it fits their views better. If your call to action is that people should move communities from Lemmy.ml to other instances, this has already happened a bit, this thread gets reposted very frequently. All it really seems to me is that you're spreading drama.

What do I recommend?

Rather than trying to consolidate communities across instances, replicate communities as needed. Communities on Lemmy are more like hashtags for an instance, and instances are more like subreddits of old. Instances have their own cultures and values, so a Gaming thread on Hexbear, for example, is going to be different from a Lemmy.world Gaming thread, and that's a good thing. All sorting can still let you see other instances, there's no need to risk moderator dominance over communities by trying to consolidate on a single instance. Heck, this community is an example of that very process.

load more comments (46 replies)

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

One of the mods over there is a Russian who refuses to answer whether he's pro-Russian or not, says Russian propaganda doesn't exist, pretends to be American while intensely engaging in American threads, denies Uighur genocide, etc etc etc.

https://lemmy.world/u/davel@lemmy.ml

https://lemmygrad.ml/u/davel

He has some older account where there was Russian being used but I think he may have deleted it or I just can't be arsed to look enough rn.

Anyway, one of the clearest pro-Russian trolls I've seen. Lemmy.ml is full of them, I don't know why lemmy.world federates with them.

Edit. Now he comments only when post is locked. Hey Davel, are you a pro-Russian troll? Reply to this and ignore the bit about being pro-Russian, won't you? ;>

Edit2 I came on PC to look up the link which he had forgotten in which he's posted using Russian/Ukrainian (I don't recognise which one), and the comments I've made about him have weirdly been removed. Something that would require a mod. But Pro-Russian Putler-dick loving trolls would never do something like remove comments that disagree with them while actively avoiding answering questions like "why do you support Putin?" "why are you pro-Russian?" **You literally circle-jerk with Yogthos about how you're "definitely not a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda", while refusing to answer something as simple as "are you pro-Russian". It's cringe. If you had grown up in the west, you'd actually know how ridiculous you sound. :D

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Wait, now I’m a Russian pretending to be an American? This tale gets taller every time you tell it 😂

He has some older account where there was Russian being used but I think he may have deleted it or I just can’t be arsed to look enough rn.

[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Anti-communism is the root of fascism

[–] Podunk@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago

So nuanced. So brave.

[–] PiousAgnostic@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago

You are the fascist problem of communism.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The solution is that an instance that cheerfully associates itself with an ideology that wiped away the lives of many tens of millions of people and immiserated possibly a billion more - that instance should be relegated to a dusty basement room where new users won't easily find it.

[–] halm@leminal.space 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Just to weigh in here with a bit of political nuance — "tankies" are certainly defined by their leftist politics, but moreso by their apologist defense of regimes that more or less transparently use socialist or communist maxims as a cover for state capitalism or straight out autocracy.

Tankies may be the loudest voices to claim themselves Marxist or socialist, but please don't mistake them as actually representing those ideologies truthfully or completely. Personally, I see tankies as more indebted to a cold war-style school of Soviet dogma transplanted to current autocracies. Marx and Trotsky would have rolled their eyes at either.

load more comments